


The Wooing of Adara

by Thimblerig



Category: Power of Three - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:51:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adara was well known for being very beautiful, and the Wisest of the Wise Women, and the mother of three remarkable children, and the wife of Gest who was a pretty good Chief, as Chiefs go. But that is another story.</p>
<p>This is a story of how Adara got married.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wooing of Adara

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Firerose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firerose/gifts).



 

Adara was well known for being very beautiful, and the Wisest of the Wise Women, and the mother of three remarkable children, and the wife of Gest who was a pretty good Chief, as Chiefs go. But that is another story.

This is a story of how Adara got married.

**

Adara's mother died soon after she was born, which was sad, Adara supposed, but she had never known the lady to miss her.  Instead as a baby Adara had been passed around all the other nursing mothers and it worked out alright. 

When she was a little older, she still got passed around a lot - there was always a woman making sure that her hair was combed and her clothes mended, but it seemed to be somebody different from week to week.  And then she was handed back to her father Og, when he wasn't chiefing, because he liked to coo over his little girl when he got the chance.  Adara didn't know any different so she couldn't say if it was better or worse to having a mother who was always there or not.  But she liked to follow her brother Orban around, because he was tall, and his hair was bright, and he always seemed to know what he was about and where he was going.

 ** 

When she was five, Adara first learned a little about what 'wise' meant. 

She had been in among the woman at the looms, because Orban was Outside learning how to use weapons, and that sort of thing isn't proper for five-year-old girls.  Instead she helped one of the younger women, Selni, as she worked at the tall upright frame.  Selni would toss a shuttle with thread trailing behind it through the long weighted warp strings and Adara caught and held it while Selni did complicated things with beating sticks and heddles and such.  Then Adara would toss the shuttle back and it would begin again.  Adara's job was simple, but she took it very seriously, and her dark straight eyebrows furrowed as she caught and tossed the shuttle. 

Selni liked to talk as she worked with her hands, and chattered like a magpie about the cheese they were making that had used up all the milk-settling pans, and who kissed whom at the last Feast, and whether it looked like rain.  She was wondering aloud whether she'd catch any rabbits the next time she went on the Hunt (because they made the  _best_  gloves) when Adara, her brows still furrowed, asked Selni why she wasn't a Hunter. 

"I hunt," said Selni equably.   

"But you're not a Hunter."  Adara pronounced the word carefully.  She was at an age where she was very interested in learning words.  "Boys can be Hunters, or Chanters, or Chiefs and things.  Why aren't any girls Hunters?" 

Selni tugged one of her tawny braids of hair thoughtfully.  "Well, I could tell you that it's just the way that it is, but... hmmm."  Then she pointed at the coloured threads she'd been using.  The cloth that she was weaving was a cloak for Adara, who was the Daughter of a Chief, so it had seven different colours in it - four shades of green, and blue and caterpillar yellow and a streak of brilliant scarlet.  When she wove them all together, the colours would mix and mottle, so that from only a little way away they would confuse the eyes and blend with the grass and stones outside, much better than plain green or grey would.  "Men are usually just one colour," she said, trying to explain.  "They specialise.  Women have to be a little bit of all of them.  It's how we're made, I guess - a little bit of hunting, and knowing words, and making cheese, and weaving, and having babies, and passing on the stories and knowing the lines of the wandering stars.  Phew, it's exhausting.  But if we do it really well, we get to be Wise." 

"What's 'Wise'?" said Adara. 

One of the other weavers, an older woman, with a humped back and hair as pale as the Moon said then, "Clever is knowing the words; Wise is knowing when not to say them." 

Later, Adara would know what she had meant, in the worst way.   

** 

In Adara's twelth year Selni was kidnapped by a travelling goldsmith out of Islaw.  It was a terrible shame and scandal and no-one would stop talking about it for months.  But Otmound was too harried to spare the men to raid Selni back at the time.  (And, Selni had said as she climbed out the window in the middle of a moonless night, "I'm better out of it.  Lower down my bag, hey?" so Adara had whispered a few things in Og's ear and, while he shouted a lot for the look of things, he let the matter go and forbade his tempestuous son from raising the matter again.  Even when she was a child, Og valued Adara's advice. 

But he wouldn't listen to her about the Dorig, and was always gathering men to raid the places where the watery folk came up for air and sunlight.  It was at one of these gatherings years later that Adara met Gest, who would become the love of her life, and at first she hated him. 

** 

Gest was bluff, with tawny hair and a wide grin.  He was solidly built, and it took a long while for Adara to realise that she was a hair or two taller than the man.  When Gest was around, there was a lot of Gest. 

He stood, a stranger, where Adara worked at the cheese-making, and she ignored him completely.  There was such a lot that could go wrong with curing cheese, and in Otmound these last few years anything that  _could_  go wrong  _would._    _Forget about learning the lines of luck_ , thought Adara,  _mastering Otmound cheese would make any woman wise..._  

"You're very pretty," the stranger said eventually, and Adara thought,  _Hey ho, another one.  Can't he see I'm busy?_

_"_ You hear that a lot, I suppose, because, gosh, I mean  _really_  pretty and I sound like a fool right now don't I?  I often do - I'm not at all clever.  But look!  Present!" 

Adara couldn't help but shudder at this.  For some reason, the young men that courted her usually thought she might like... trophies of Dorig hunting.  And they offered.  A few brought something back from their hunting.  If she were lucky, it would just be one of their wide silvery belts with buckles shaped like shells.  Adara wasn't usually lucky; not since that time she said the words she shouldn't.  She kept her eyes down. 

Then the stranger sat down on the floor with his feet tucked beneath him and moved a small package towards Adara.  It was a scarf, woven from four shades of green, and blue, and caterpillar yellow, and the scarlet that only someone of Chiefly blood could wear.  "Er, it's from my second cousin's best friend's wife," he explained.  "He's a Goldsmith, she's one of Islaw's Wise Women.  She thought you might like it?" 

Adara blinked. 

"I'm Gest," the stranger said.  "From Islaw, originally, but I speak for Garholt now." 

"I'm Adara," she said. 

"Yes." 

** 

Adara saw Gest again at the Feast that night, when they sat around the eating squares.  He looked across the square from where he sat squashed between her bustling round father Og and her large brother Orban, while his narrow friend Banot plucked at a harp nearby.  Whenever Gest looked at her he grinned like an idiot.  This was nothing new - the young men often did and, oh, Adara tried to be pleasant but all they could talk about was killing Dorig, or how many deer they could catch at the next hunt or, if they happened to be training as a Chanter, all the songs they knew.  And they were  _boring._  

** 

Og tried to deal with Gest the next day, closeted away in the large Chief's House.  Adara sat near, working with a drop spindle, because she was a Wise Woman, and they could ask her about the lines of luck if there was a need.  It was a tricky matter, because Og needed more fighters, which Gest had, and technically as the Senior Chief Og could order him to bring them, but no-one had done that in hundreds of years and there would be trouble  from the other Mounds if he did.  So instead Og cajoled and jollied Gest along, and then Orban slapped him on the shoulder and insinuated that maybe he was afraid of the Dorig.  When they acted as a team like that, it usually worked - there was something about Orban that made a man want to prove himself better than the Chief's son.  But Gest smiled wide and said nothing very much and didn't exactly agree or disagree or ever quite give Og grounds to try ordering him to fight.  But this went on for hours, and everybody was getting frustrated when...

"Come on," said Orban.  "We know the Dorig are swarming.  More than ever!  Prove yourself a man!" 

"Oh, well, that would be tricky," said Gest.  "I'm getting married soon, and it's terribly bad luck to shed blood when you're getting married." 

Og still didn't want to offend Gest, so he put a big smile on his face, and said, "Who's the lucky girl?  I'm sure she'd be willing to wait a few months until the luck shifted..." 

"Why don't you ask her yourself?" said Gest.  "I'm marrying Adara." 

Og choked, and Adara dropped her spindle.  Orban just snickered. 

Then Og said, "You'd have to do the traditional Three Tasks to win her hand first." 

And Gest said, "Of course." 

And Og said, "And if you fail, you won't be getting married, so you'll bring your men to the Dorig-hunt." 

"Of course," said Gest. 

** 

Adara found Gest later and yelled at him.  "Who do you think you are?  Did you ask  _me_ if I wanted to marry  _you?_  I hardly know you!" 

"Well, that's true."  Gest looked shame-faced.  "It just... slipped out in the middle there.  Er, can I ask you to marry me now?" 

"No!" 

"Oh, well.  I'll ask you again tomorrow, hey?  Just in case you change your mind." 

Adara pursed her lips.  Then she said, "Og always makes riddles the First Task.  Are you a Chanter?" 

"Nope, I'm thick as porridge," Gest said, "but I know a great riddle about an onion." 

** 

Adara would wonder for a long time after how Gest did it, when they stood him in a ring in the sunlight against Otmound's three best Chanters and set them swapping riddles for hours.  She thought it might be that a queer old Mound like Islaw, which kept Chanters like other Mounds kept bees, trained up its children in riddles and weird old stories like they were meat and drink.   

But eventually she concluded that, however Hero-like Gest might be, whatever feats of memory or wordcraft he might pull out, he knew in himself that he was incurably  _ordinary._ If he happened to win the contest with a hoarse throat and a tale of a hundred-headed, one-eyed monster shambling towards a feast that none of the other Chanters could clarify, he would  _still_ know that he'd just pulled out a hokey old riddle about an onion-seller.   

And that was nothing to brag about, really, so he again told Adara that he was a blockhead.  "But," he added, "you are very beautiful." 

"I'm also good with cheese," Adara added. 

"Indeed.  Will you marry me?" 

"Ask me again tomorrow." 

** 

The second task Og posed was to bring him a golden Dorig's collar. 

Adara added flatly, "You mustn't kill a Dorig to get it.  If you hurt any Dorig in this I will hate you forever." 

All the onlookers in the Mound nodded wisely.  Simply killing a Dorig and taking gold off its corpse was simple, however rare the golden collars or wily the shapechangers.  If Gest was a Hero, his Tasks needed to be harder and more complicated.  But Gest looked at Adara with his face screwed up in puzzlement, as if he simply couldn't work out what was she was thinking.  Then he nodded, slowly, and said, "I so swear." 

When he came back in the night lit with Moon-light, holding the green-gold loop carved with spirals and animals and fish and tipped with the sharp beaks of birds, Adara's stomach heaved and the blood roared in her ears, and she thought she might faint.  But Gest looked Adara in the eye and said, very seriously,  "I swear by the Sun, and the Moon, and the Earth, by the blood of King Ban that yet runs in my veins, I swear by my mother's heart and my father's harp, I killed no Dorig to get this collar, nor yet commited deceit or unfair stratagem in its taking.  It is free to shine." 

He put it, tentatively, into her hand, and closed her fingers around it.  "Alright?" 

She swallowed hard.  "Alright." 

** 

Og was very annoyed with Gest when he came back.  Nobody had ever completed the Second Task before, and now Og risked not only losing his beloved daughter, but the men Gest might have brought from Garholt.  So he went about with a furrowed brow and a stormy air for the rest of the day and all of the people and bees of Otmound buzzed about in an irritable frenzy with him.   

Finally Og's brow cleared and he said, quite happily, "That big stone on top of the Haunted Mound.  Shift it.  I want it off there by tomorrow morning." 

Adara and Gest walked up the top of the Haunted Mound that afternoon to inspect it.  It was a lowering, gloomy rock, far bigger than a team of strong men or sheep tied in traces could rock.  Gest kicked it glumly.  Then they walked back through the grass and heather to the top of Otmound, high in the sun, and sat looking over the expanse of the Moor, all green and wispy with ground-mist and the flutter of birds taking flight and the silver shine of still pools opening in the green like eyes.  In the distance, the Giants banged things together, as they sometimes did. 

"O Wise Woman," Gest said formally, "will you tell me where the lines of luck lie?" 

Adara wrinkled her nose and thought hard about what the positions of the wandering stars might tell her.  "They're all for Earth," she said, sunk in gloom.  "They're strong for dark things, and rocks, and the People of the Earth.  Not us."   

Gest sighed.  "There's still time," he said. 

The tale of how Gest solved the Third Task is dealt with elsewhere, and of the many consequences of that act, and of the things that led up to it.  

But this story ends with Adara and Gest sitting on a sunny hillside, back to back, when Gest put out his hand and said, "Will you marry me anyway?" and Adara covered it with her own, and said, "Yes."

**Author's Note:**

> \- I nicked the title off the old Celtic story "The Wooing of Olwen", which turned into a frame story for a lot of semi-random tasks (though Adara's story only has three). 
> 
> \- _Instead as a baby Adara had been passed around_ \- Adara is pretty much the ultimate mother figure, but the book doesn't mention her mother at all, or much in the way of women at Otmound. I interpreted that as Adara being raised communally - kindness and nourishment and teaching and what-not, but never quite enough to bond with one woman in particular
> 
> \- _she was a hair or two taller than the man_ \- I borrowed this bit from _Homeward Bounders_ and Konstam Khan the Great Hero(TM) who's Six Feet Tall, only when we actually meet him he's actually kind of short, and still a Great Hero.
> 
> \- The scurrilous theory that Gest cheated at his three tasks is all very well, but even if Adara _did_ tell him all the answers to the riddles, he must have had a formidable memory to remember them flawlessly on short notice. And it's mentioned in the book that his father was a Chanter. I choose to believe that this was the one task Gest achieved without needing to use his Power of Diplomacy (which is, admittedly, quite wonderful all on its own) .
> 
> \- There really is an old riddle about a hundred-headed monster that's actually an onion-seller, and there are versions in both Old English (Exeter Book Riddle 86) and Latin (Symphosius's "Luscus alium vendens"), if you're interested.


End file.
